Any business that operates via e-commerce is constantly on the lookout for ways to benefit and improve its website. The basics – having high-quality, professional pictures, writing concise and informative product descriptions, and answering customer queries through an FAQ page or chat function – should be covered early on, but added extras can be a little trickier to get right.

Blogging is one of those additional functions an e-commerce website can run that has a number of effective and important advantages.

Blogging advantages

Getting your blogging strategy spot-on is enhanced by blogger outreach, which will further boost your search engine optimization and show your brand off to a new and wider audience. Having your blog in order can also increase traffic to your website, inform customers, and navigate them towards your sales pages.

1. Increase traffic

Blogs that are informative and entertaining will generate a rise in traffic to your website as readers flock to see your latest post. Blog posts should be relevant and engaging so that customers are encouraged to bookmark your website to return to it regularly or follow you on social media so that they never miss a new post.

Holding readers’ attention and laying out content so that it can be skim-read are both aims that you should have for your blogs.

2. Improve SEO

Through increasing traffic, increasing how many visitors click through to your website from other sites, increasing the amount of time readers spend on your website, and increasing the number of internal links that visitors click on, your search engine optimization ranking will improve.

This will move your site higher up search engine results pages, meaning more potential customers find your business sooner and may choose to spend their money with you.

3. Navigate visitors

A fantastic blog should use internal links to navigate readers to where you actually want them to be. An entertaining blog is critical but, as an e-commerce website, selling products is more important still.

Your blog can be used to show off your products or explain their benefits, encouraging readers to click through to your sales pages through signposting and hyperlinks.

4. Inform customers

Teaching visitors something new does not necessarily mean your website needs to be fully informational. Simply having an informative section – your blog – can be enough to make readers feel they have been stimulated and engaged by your brand. Giving back to your customers makes you appear professional and trustworthy and will encourage them to buy your products.

5. Link with social media

Blogs are a superb method of boosting your social media following. This can be done by linking to your social media pages through the use of widgets or simply by sharing your blog posts out on Twitter and Facebook in order to generate interest and entice new followers.

6. Free marketing

Lastly, if you are writing blog posts yourself, it can be a form of free marketing. All it costs you to write an excellent blog post is time, and the results in the form of increased traffic and a more engaged audience will be worth the effort.